Sunday lunch seemed as good a time as any to test one of my pet
theories: people will pass by monuments or statues for years without ever
really looking at them or knowing anything about them. Of the 12 of us sitting
around the table, 9 were Italians (5 of them native Florentines) and 3
foreigners, all of us long-time residents in the city. I asked if anyone could
tell me the name of the person represented in the statue standing in the middle
of piazza San Marco. Nobody could. This was surprising, as San Marco is a major
bus hub and one of the busiest squares in town, through which thousands of
people transit every day. It was also surprising as this is a very elaborate
and handsome statue of one of the major figures of Italian unification.
General Manfredo Fanti was a hero of the Italian Resurgence and the man
who reorganised the armed forces in the newly founded Kingdom of Italy. Not
long after unification, the city of Florence commissioned realist sculptor Pio
Fedi (1816-1892), whose studio was in via dei Serragli, to create a bronze
monument to Fanti. Once completed in 1873, it was erected where it stands
today, facing what was then the headquarters of the Royal Military Command, on
the corner of via Arazzieri.
The inscription (in Italian) on the front of a narrow marble plinth
reads, ?Manfredo Fanti born in Carpi on 25 February 1806, for the love of
liberty, exiled in 1831. Learned the art of war in Spain and in the Italian
Wars of Independence. Hastened with valour and intelligence the independence
and unification of his homeland. Died in Florence on 15 April 1865.’ Symbolic
figures on the sides of the plinth represent politics, strategy, tactics and
fortifications. A bas-relief depicts a scene from the decisive 1859 Battle of
San Martino.
The Florentines were quick to draw a comparison. In his masterpiece, The Rape of Polyxena (1865), which stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi, in piazza Signoria, Fedi had given the figure of the warrior Achilles a flamboyant helmet.
However, he had left Fanti bareheaded. Wits that they are, they soon were
singing a satirical ditty suggesting that whenever the wind blew, to avoid
catching cold, the general should ask the Greek warrior if he could borrow his
headgear.
It is unlikely the pertinacious Fanti would have found this amusing. Or
that he would have felt the need for a hat. In 1825, after spending his
childhood in Carpi, in the Emilia-Romagna region, Fanti joined the Pioneer
Cadet Corps of the Duchy of Modena. He graduated in mathematics and civil
engineering and became an officer in the Engineer Corps. In 1831, he joined
insurrectionist Ciro Menotti in an attempt to overthrow the dictatorial Duke
Francesco IV of Modena, but was captured and imprisoned. Because the Austrians
refused to come to his aid against the rebels, the duke was forced to flee and
so Fanti was released.
Fanti, however, continued to participate in the revolt that spread
throughout northern and central Italy. But once the Austrians intervened and
the city of Ancona capitulated to them on March 29, 1831, to avoid capture and
execution, he sought exile in France. With the assistance of the astronomer D.
J. F. Arago (1786-1853), he enlisted in the French Engineer Corps and designed
the fortifications of the city of Lyon.
Fanti next joined Giuseppe Mazzini’s revolutionary uprising known as the
Invasion of Savoy. In 1835, following its failure, Fanti left France for Spain,
remaining there for the next 13 years, joining the Spanish army. Through a
series of promotions, in 1847 he became a colonel, about the time he married
Carlotta Tio de Valencia.
During the first war of independence in Italy, in 1848, Fanti returned
home to fight against the Austrian occupation, first for the king of Piedmont
and Sardinia and then for the provisional government in Lombardy, where he was
elected a deputy. Following the defeat at Novara in 1849, he was
court-martialled for his association with the unfortunate general, Gerolamo
Ramorino. Acquitted, in 1855 he fought as commander of the Second Piedmont
Provisional Brigade during the Crimean War, receiving from the English the
Crimean War Medal for his heroism.
In 1859, he saw combat in the second war of independence. That same
year, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, the prime minister and his political
patron, instructed Fanti to re-organise the army in central Italy and to set up
the Military School of Modena. In 1860, the king appointed him a senator, and
in 1861, he became minister of war and the navy and commander in chief in
central and southern Italy, taking part in the victory at Gaeta.
Once the war was over, his task was to re-organise the army of the
recently unified country, which involved integrating 7,000 officers from
Garibaldi’s Army of the South. They expected to hold the same ranks in the new
Royal Army, and Fanti became very unpopular when he opposed this.
In 1863, Fanti retired. His protector, Cavour, had died in 1861, and the
lung disease from which Fanti was suffering had worsened. Two years later,
after a brief sojourn in France and Egypt, he died in Florence.
Now that you know more about Fanti, next time you pass his statue in
piazza San Marco, give him a wink and tell him he has not been completely
forgotten.
